Immersion Cooling Technology: The Future of Data Center Cooling
Immersion cooling technology is one of the most promising technologies used in several sectors today. The use of this cooling technology is high, especially for making electric vehicle packs and power transformers.
Traditionally, cooling was possible only through the big fans passing air over rack-mounted hardware and servers. The bigger the structure of the server, the number of fans is required to reduce the heat level.
Such limitations of the traditional cooling methods resulted in the development of advanced cooling technologies known as immersion cooling.
Immersion Cooling- An Overview
Immersion cooling technology also known as liquid submersion cooling, is a way of submerging the components of the computers thermally and not electrically.
Immersion cooling is a basic routine of cooling large components of power distribution such as transformers. However, the use of immersion cooling is still in the emerging stage and slowly getting popular in different sectors such as automotive.
Information technology (IT) servers or hardware is cooled using the immense cooling technology method. The exchange of heat between the warmer coolant and the cooler water circuit occurs with the help of a device known as a heat exchanger (i.e., radiator or heater core).
Supercomputers such as the Cray and Cary-2 also use the larger system of immense cooling technology to remove the excess heat level.
Immersion Cooling Types
Immersion cooling system is divided into two common types: Single phase immersion cooling and Two-phase immersion cooling.
- Single-Phase Immersion Cooling
Single-phase immersion cooling never freezes or boils; it stays in the liquid forms and never changes its state.
In this immersion cooling system, the coolant pumps the available heat to the heat exchangers, where the heat gets transferred to a water circuit to provide liquid cooling immersion effects.
- Two-Phase Immersion Cooling
In two-phase immersion cooling, the fluid exists in gas and liquid phases due to its boiling nature. The system uses the benefits of the method called latent heat (a method to use thermal energy to change the state of the working fluid).
The only possible way to collect the working fluid is by boiling, the reason why it always stays at the level of boiling point.
Current Scenario of Immersion Cooling Market
The demand for immersion cooling technology is growing at a much higher pace, mainly due to the growing number of data centers worldwide.
For data centers, cooling is mandatory to keep networking devices and servers constantly running throughout the day.
Due to continuing working, the core temperature of these data centers becomes much high that needs to be controlled, as it can result in outrage in the data center.
According to the BIS Research report, the global immersion cooling market is expected to touch a market value of $1,605.5 million by 2027 from $251.0 million in 2021, at a CAGR of 36.3% during the forecast period of 2022–2027.
Advantages of Immersion Cooling
Following are some of the advantages of using immersion cooling technology.
- Low Chances of Trouble spot
Since IT hardware is submerged in liquid, the portability for any trouble spot’s taking place is much lower. The poor design of the IT conventional racks is the primary key contributor to the creation of the hotspots. However, the adoption of liquid immersion cooling technology can help in reducing this disadvantage.
- Cost Efficiency
Failures of servers can take place at any time. Investing a hefty amount in getting cooling systems such as air conditioners and big fans to keep the service heat level maintained can be much more expensive.
However, investing in immersion cooling technology can help to get a better cooling effect at much lower costs and, at the same time, can be maintained at a minimum cost for a long time.
- Enhance Reliability
With the help of an immersion cooling system, the servers are kept in a sealed pack place from the environment, and the moving parts such as fans are removed from the servers. When these servers are attached to immersion cooling systems., it becomes easier for the experts to access and provide the required service.
Conclusion
The immersion cooling system has a stronger foundation that can allow servers to achieve better performance while running continuously and maintain the heat level.
The adoption of immersion cooling systems can help companies to save a massive amount of money and use them as a substitute for the big fans and air conditioners that take up a lot of places.
